That Hurt - More Than You Know

So, I raced yesterday: the Ontario Masters Indoor Championships. I was entered in the 3000m - and hoped, like last year, to take home the Crown...

My coach Matt Loiselle (click for Matt's coaching page "The Good Times Running") and I had planned out the perfect race strategy - much like Pre (see the clip above - start it at around 7:10 [and pardon the stupid Spanish sub titles], where Pre, driving and talking with the (now) American running legend Frank Shorter, lays out the race strategy he planned to implement to set the World Record for the 3 mile: "64 secs - boom; 1:28 - boom..."). You get the point - I too had planned on a specific pace: 40 sec per 200, 39 for the last = 9:59. In fact, for me, winning the race yesterday took a back seat to the goal of a sub 10min performance.

However, as the kids say, "fail". Ya, I won the race (in 10:13), but not the goal I had set.

For although I put in the work physically, I guess I am still a work in progress on the mental toughness. Unlike a longer race - like any of the Ironman's I have raced, where if you drift off for a few secs and lose focus, not really a big deal - in a 3000m race, if you lose focus and thus precious seconds, you are dead in the water. And I ain't no Pre (as if).

The race started out perfectly; I was relaxed and in the zone. I went thru 1 km in exactly 3:20 - perfect; 1200 in 4:01 - "pretty damned to close to goal pace, no worries, make it up on the bell lap"; cruising thru 1400m, I noticed I was now 2 seconds off pace. "Uh oh". 1600 -  3 seconds off goal pacing..."uh oh" big time.

Kurt Vonnegut once famously wrote "And so it goes".

And for me yesterday, so it went - slowly, inexorably, obviously, in plain view as I watched the race clock tick away each lap - downhill. What was to be a goal I have not yet achieved - sub 10 for 3km - was again, damn it, not to be.

I finished the race with the crushing knowledge that I had, somewhere after after 1400m, drifted mentally, and in losing my focus and the toughness to "hurt", had failed to run the race I had not only trained for, but was more than capable of running.

It was not the fact I had not run sub 10 min per se that pissed me off (ok, that did piss me off royally); rather, it was the knowledge  - only gained upon post race reflection, because when in the moment you don't see the reality of time - that I had simply quit on myself.

I knew the race goal I had set would hurt - running on the razor's edge at red line pace is not fun - and yet with full knowledge and awareness, at some point I still unconsciously backed away from the place all runners have to go to achieve (their own personal) greatness: "the dark place".

 Nietzsche wrote in his famous work "Beyond Good and Evil", referencing the Superman, "when you look long into the abyss, the abyss looks long into you". I didn't do that yesterday; I just have to re-learn how to look in to that abyss, a place I have only been on a few, rare occasions.

Because now I see this possibility not as a place or thing to fear, but as an opportunity, as Nietzsche wrote, "to get faster, stronger, to suffer". The abyss is a place I have to go - because I can.

So today, instead of wallowing in self pity, I headed out the door and ran - ran to exorcise the demons of self-doubt and anger at what I initially saw as a failure. And I had a good run - a damned good run.

And rather than post the link to Beck's song, "I'm a Loser, Baby (So Why Don't You Kill Me)", which I initially thought was the perfect metaphor for my race yesterday, let's try this approach instead - a cool Nike commercial using the poetry of Langston Hughes:

run fast
Johnny Boy

Jewelry and Nano Seconds

Track Stars and Floppy Necklaces: What's the Deal?

So on Saturday night, in Birmingham, England, the American Galen Rupp ran 5000 meters in 13 minutes 11.44 seconds. (I went out to dinner with my wife and had warm chocolate cake for dessert, so I had a pretty awesome Saturday night too. But I digress.)

In case you're wondering, Rupp's 13:11.44 is a new American record for 5000 meters. He snatched the mark away from Bernard Lagat by 6/100th of a second.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Good? Now, to put things in perspective: That "moment" you just took probably lasted 100/100th of a second! Maybe more!

The point is, Rupp notched this new record — over 5000 meters, mind you — by a margin so slim, "razor thin" seems inadequate to describe it. If I were Bernard Lagat, right about now I'd be thinking one thing and one thing only:

"Dang. Maybe I should ditch the necklace."

That's right. Like many elite runners — track types especially, it seems — Lagat is a serial necklace-wearer. As shown here:

Sometimes he puts it in his mouth, like this:

I've always found this mouth thing sort of quirky and endearing, but the track-star-with-floppy-necklace phenomenon in general has always puzzled me.

I mean, seriously: When events — especially sprints — are routinely won and lost by hundredths of a second, wouldn't you maybe want to leave the dangling gold chains and stuff at home on race day? In the aforementioned 5000 meter scenario, isn't it plausible that something like a flapping necklace could add 6/100th of a second to your time? That it could seem less like jewelry around your neck, and more like an albatross?

For the record, I am in no way picking on Mr. Lagat. I am and always have been a fan of his. And in any case, as I've said, this is a widespread thing. Here are just a few photos I was able to dig up quickly…

Floppy necklace, headband, watch, wristband. You have to know the team that designed Michael Rodgers' skin-tight suit saw this and shook their heads:

Necklace and double wristbands? At least it's symmetrical:

Usain Bolt isn't wearing a necklace, but the guy behind him is. Just sayin':

Asafa Powell, wearing not only a necklace but a Livestrong wristband and a watch. I guess in case he wants to check his splits every 25 meters or something:

Sanya Richards is a necklace wearer…

…but then, she also has one of THESE necklaces.

So I guess she's earned the right to wear pretty much whatever she wants.

me? I like my wedding band...

We Played with Legos and Sticks!

At first glance, this little gem resembles a piece of fancy shmancy jewellery. Or even a jewel-encrusted tire. 

But no...It’s a yo-yo. 

The Nostalgia Yo Yo is a $5,000 toy designed by world champion yo-yo builder Shinobu Konmoto. And if the price wasn’t enough to garner a “WTF?” reaction, this might: it takes six months to make just one of these bad boys. Yup. Six months for one little yo yo. Make sure you put the waiting period to good use and learn a few tricks on the dollar store version. Nothing screams "nouveau riche" like someone with a blinged-out toy and no skills.

But "walking the dog" or "cat's cradle" with this yo-yo will be worth every, single, cent.

stupid is as stupid does.

Hello, Mr. Wind? You Win

Seriously: i give up.

Wind: 1. John: 0. You win - for today.

-11°C

• °C

• °F

A few clouds

• Feels Like: -19
• Wind: W 61km/h
• Wind gusts: 96km/h
• Sunrise: 7:13
• Sunset: 17:52

Earlier in the day, temperatures reached record-breaking double digits in some areas, including Toronto, which broke a 1949 record with a high of 10.8°C. Ditches were flowing fast with snow melt, causing localized flooding in places like Collingwood and Thorold. In Ottawa, where the high hit 11.8°C on Friday, the mild temperatures forced officials to close the Rideau Canal, disappointing visitors hoping to enjoy the last weekend of Winterlude.

But the brief taste of spring didn't last. A cold front roared into southern Ontario Friday evening, dropping temperatures more than 10 degrees and packing strong winds. A gust of 96 km/h was recorded at Pearson Airport Friday night, and winds were gusting up to 60 km/h across the region, causing widespread damage.

The wind tore the roof off a strip mall in Toronto's west end, ripped a balcony off an apartment building, and toppled trees and powerlines throughout the GTA.

Strong winds also hit the northeastern United States. In Washington D.C., a gust toppled the National Christmas Tree, a 47-year-old, 13-metre-high Colorado blue spruce planted near the White House.

The winds had died down somewhat by Saturday morning, but not before they whipped up some lake effect snow to complicate things for motorists. Police shut down Highway 400 north of Highway 88 early Saturday morning due to the poor conditions. Highways 6, 12, 21 and 89 were also closed due to near-zero visibility. Intense squalls blowing off Lake Huron stretched across southern Ontario, bringing significant snow to places like Burlington, Mississauga and St. Catharines.

Snow moves in Sunday afternoon

By Sunday, motorists will have other problems to contend with on the roads. A storm system will make its way into southern Ontario, bringing snow to some places, rain to others. Up to 10 cm of snow is expected for the Greater Toronto Area. Heavier amounts of snow are likely towards the Niagara Peninsula due to lake enhancement with easterly and northeasterly winds.

There is also a risk of freezing rain in some places, including Windsor and the Niagara Peninsula, says Dayna Vettese, a meteorologist at The Weather Network.

Stretching - Highly Overrated? Maybe...

Stretching before your run? You may be wasting your time

You’ve been pulling your quads, extending your calves and Achilles tendons, bending your back — and wasting your time.

Runners who stretch before their morning jog are no less likely to suffer an injury than those who don’t, a large new study shows.

“If you take all the runners and you group them, there wasn’t a difference between the people who stretched . . . and the people who just went out and ran,” says Dr. Daniel Pereles, the study’s author.

“The typical, five-minute, pre-run stretch didn’t seem to make any difference,” says Pereles, an orthopedic surgeon at George Washington University.

Pereles will present his findings Friday at a meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons in San Diego.

A heated debate over the value of those pre-run contortions is raging in the running community.

Pereles, a former marathoner — and stretcher — who suffered a major tendon injury two years ago, conducted the study of some 2,700 regular runners out of curiosity. It is believed to be the first randomized, controlled examination of the issue.

The study’s runners were recruited through track team and magazine websites. They included all age groups and every kind — from ultra marathoners down to neighbourhood joggers. They ran a minimum of 10 miles (16 kilometres) a week.

Pereles says he’s already been confronted about his data by a New York physician who treats ballet injuries. That physician insisted that the typical five-minute stretch the study’s subjects went through is not nearly enough to bestow any protection.

“He said, ‘Your study’s not any good, because if you’re going to get any results from your stretching . . . you’re going to have to spend at least 10 minutes per muscle group’,’” Pereles recalls. “Well for a typical runner . . . that’s going to be 30 to 40 minutes of stretching. I said, ‘What kind of weed are you smoking? Most people have 30 to 40 minutes to run’.”

There are caveats here, however, Pereles says.

If you are used to stretching before running, don’t stop. And if you abstain, don’t start.

Pereles says runners who stopped stretching for his three-month study increased their injury risk by 40 per cent.

Likewise, non-stretchers who began the pre-run ritual saw their injury rates go up a similar amount.

But Pereles says he’s at a loss to explain this switch-up statistic.

“I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know,” he says. “But it’s got to be something with the switch in that routine.”

It’s been shown in laboratory settings that stretched muscle cells tend to contract with more power, Pereles says. “But obviously a five minute pre-run stretch is not having enough of an effect in the body.”

Hurts So Good

Running is a special sport. It’s you against you. It’s about pain, the tolerance of it anyway. Whoever tolerates the most pain for the longest amount of time, wins. There is, of course, that small matter of God-given ability, but the dynamics of running is the same for all involved: the more you’re willing to suffer, the better the result.

We train day in and day out to delay the onset of pain; the fitter you are the faster and longer you can run before pain rears it’s ugly head. In every race and in every training session – when they’re done right, anyway – there comes a point when things get tough, when you have to choose what you want most: slow down and the pain goes away, keep the pedal down and the pain stays… but the hope of faster times and better fitness stays alive. You have to choose to battle the pain.

I’m all for the back of the packers who walk their first 5k or half marathon, it’s great they’re off the couch and pursuing fitness, but those who are content to stay there are missing something… no, everything, everything that I find glorious about this sport, anyway. There are things you can only discover about yourself when you’re pushed to the brink, when you’re on the razor’s edge, pursuing faster times, pushing human limits. It’s not a mile split – the pace is different for everyone, it’s the pace of pain. The pace when the questions mount, when you’re forced to come up with answers.

Francis Bacon once said,

“It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.”

Pain is the portal to self-discovery… and I’m not just talking about exercise.

I’ve said it a thousand times: if I live to be 100 years old, it will be tough to top the the "Troubles" I had to go through a few years ago. No need to get in to the nitty gritty details… suffice it to say, it just sucked. I was in a valley, and it was a long odyssey of pain, but I grew more and discovered more about myself during that period than at any other point in my life.

So how does one respond to adversity, times of crisis, or when things don’t go their way? Tough times reveal character, tough times provide answers, it’s where we’re molded and shaped.

A great way to discover yourself is to push your body to its limit – run, cycle, swim, climb, lift – whatever - rip off that set of 1000's on the track, and then, do one more. Just because you can...going into that "dark place" is scary, and while self-discovery is painful, man, is it fun.

go hard or go home

Johnny Boy

"Train Smarter" - Makes my Brain Hurt

There’s a phrase that seems to be making the rounds again and I hate it. I just hate it. I’m not hater, really. I’m a lover. But I hate this term: “Train smarter, not harder.”

People love to attach their thinking to simple phrases and mantras. Whether it’s “The early bird gets the worm” or “there’s no ‘I’ in team”, encapsulating a strategy into a few words is a handy way to capture a concept and help communicate it. The problem is that when picking just a few words, they have to be the right words or they can throw the entire concept off. As Michael Jordan once said, “There may be no ‘I’ in team, but there is an ‘I’ in ‘win’.

What Michael Jordan saw in that the phrase was that “There’s no ‘I’ in team” is an overly simplistic way to look at things. It basically says that you have to focus on teamwork above individuality, but it overlooks the fact that individual talent could trump teamwork in some situations. To put it another way, no matter how good the Bad News Bears are in working as a team, they aren’t going to beat the New York Yankees, because the individuals on the opposing team are just so much better than they are.

So why does “Train smarter, not harder” make me so mad? Well, first let’s think about what it is trying to communicate. The phrase intends to focus athletes on avoiding doing too much of the wrong things. The idea that it is attempting to get across is that athletes shouldn’t just run for the sake of running, their workouts should have a purpose and training “hard” is not necessarily the same thing as training “smartly”.

But herein lies the problem with this phrase. It often turns out that “smart” training is “hard” training. “Dumb” training, as it turns out may be endlessly training at easy paces.

The term “hard” is the issue here. “Hard” can mean two different things. First, it can mean “training a lot” and be speaking to the quantity of training. Or second it can mean “training intensely” which speaks to the intensity of the training itself. Training a lot is not necessarily a good thing, but training intensely is a very good thing. So if you were to interpret “Train smarter, not harder” to be about not pushing yourself too hard in your training, then you’ve totally missed the boat.

So, consider this: “Quality over quantity”. This phrase may not be as pithy and colorful, but it is so much more accurate. Quality over quantity says that you should pick higher quality workouts and do less of them, rather than focusing solely on getting in mileage for the sake of mileage.

The underlying concept of “Train smarter, not harder” is actually a sound one. The idea being that we need to pick out workouts carefully and make sure they are the correct workouts to take us forward toward our performance goals. It means picking and choosing, rather than just beating ourselves senseless working out “hard” without a plan. But training smart often means hard training. It means hard workout and workouts that hurt. If you’re training correctly, in fact, the workouts will be much more intense, more difficult and much, much “harder”. Getting rid of the junk and replacing it with intense workouts that advance your performance is a good thing to do.

The truth is that if you are doing your workouts correctly, they will often be so hard that they you will need to do less of them, because you’ll need time to recover from them. And that’s OK. Working out with a plan that emphasizes quality over quantity is a sure way to improve. And it turns out that really is “smart.”

run smart

Johnny Boy

365 Marathons in 365 Days - Youser

I was reading the story below, and thought, "big whoop - I raced a 3km on Sunday".

haha

Seriously, maybe the guy (in the article below) should look up the phrase "obsessive compulsive" - or, in the words of my old friend, Forrest Gump, "stupid is as stupid does".

see you in Barcelona.

Johnny Boy

BRUSSELS – People who run marathons often say one race a year is enough, both for body and mind. But that was never going to satisfy Belgium’s Stefaan Engels, who has just completed 365 marathons in 365 days.

Actually, even that wasn’t enough for Engels, who ended up completing 401 marathons in as many days: 18 on a hand bike and the rest on foot, including 365 in a row.

The 49-year-old from Ghent, northwest Belgium, is now the proud holder of the record for the most consecutive marathons, complementing his Guinness world record for the most triathlons completed in a year (20).

“It was a personal challenge,” he told Reuters by phone from his home this week, two days after completing his marathon odyssey. “I wanted to know if it was possible.”

He made it sound simple, but it was far from a straightforward “start running, stop after a year” challenge.

On Jan. 1, 2010, Engels set out from Ghent to launch his campaign and ran the requisite 42.195 km (about 26.2 miles) on the first day. He kept up that pace for the next 17 days, but then a foot injury struck and he had to stop.

Quitting was out of the question, however. Engels bought a hand bike the same day and used his arms to propel himself through his daily marathons until his foot recovered.

On day 36 — in a move that friends say is typical of the stubborn, asthmatic runner who was once told by doctors to avoid exercise completely — Engels announced he would reset the counter to zero and start the whole challenge again.

“People were saying, ‘You’re crazy, you’re throwing away 36 marathons,”’ his friend Michael van Damme said. “But he was committed to running on foot all 365 marathons.”

Twenty-five pairs of running shoes later, Engels crossed the final finish line in Barcelona on Feb. 5, completing a journey that has been compared to film character Forrest Gump’s epic run across the United States. As with Gump, local residents flocked to run alongside him wherever he went.

While Engels set a new record, there have been other extreme runners who have trodden a similar path.

One of the most famous is the American Dean Karnazes, who in 2006 ran a marathon a day for 50 days, hitting every U.S. state. Karnazes also ran nonstop across California’s Death Valley in 49 degree Celsius (120 degree Fahrenheit) and completed a marathon to the South Pole.

The Dutch runner Richard Bottram is about four months into his second attempt to run a marathon a day for a year to raise awareness of cancer. This time, he is running inside a large wheel, with volunteers keeping the wheel turning night and day when he isn’t personally running, according to his website.

Last year, the Canadian Martin Parnell completed 250 marathons to raise money for a children’s charity.

ONE FOOT AFTER THE OTHER

As for Engels, he said his goal was to motivate others to exercise. He ran most of his marathons in Belgium and Spain, but also logged kilometres in Portugal, Mexico, Canada, the United States and Britain. Had he run in a straight line, he could have made it from Lisbon to New Delhi and back.

The challenge was more mental than physical, Engels said. He spent about four and a quarter hours pounding the pavement each day, with the company of friends and an iPod loaded up with Radiohead songs and other music.

“I never ran alone, always with other people,” he said. “I tried not to think too much about what I was doing, because then you go crazy.”

Even with a 6,000-calorie daily diet that included lots of fried potatoes and pasta, washed down with the occasional Belgian beer, Engels lost 12 kg (26 lb).

His doctor, Chris Goossens, said tests this month showed no damage to his cartilage, joints or muscles.

Back at home in Ghent, Engels said he’s finally putting up his feet for a bit, as he works on a book with van Damme about his experience. He doesn’t plan to run again until March.

Engels’ record of “most marathons run on consecutive days“ smashed the previous one of 52 set by Akinori Kusuda from Japan in 2004.

Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

Does Loneliness Reduce the Benefits of Exercise?

With Valentine’s Day around the corner, this seems the proper moment to ask whether being in a relationship changes how you exercise and, perhaps even more intriguing, whether relationships affect how exercise changes you.

That latter possibility was memorably raised in an elegant series of experiments conducted not long ago at Princeton University. The researchers were trying to replicate earlier work in which the brains of mice given free access to running wheels subsequently fizzed with new brain cells, a process known as neurogenesis, and the mice performed better on rodent intelligence tests than those without access to wheels. To the Princeton researchers’ surprise, when they performed the same study with rats, “which are a little closer, physiologically, to humans,” said Alexis Stranahan, the lead author of the Princeton study, running did not lead to neurogenesis. The rats’ brains remained resolutely unaffected by exercise.

Hoping to discover why, the researchers examined how the rats and mice had been housed and learned that while the mice in the earlier experiments had lived in groups, the rats were kept in single-occupancy cages. Rats, in the wild, are gregarious. They like to be together. The researchers wondered whether isolation could somehow be undermining the cerebral benefits of exercise at a cellular level.

Putting this idea to the test, they divided young male rats into groups housed either in threes or singly and, after a week, gave half of them access to running wheels. All of these rats ran, but only the rats with cage mates experienced rapid and robust neurogenesis. Not until after weeks of running, long after the other socially engaged rats’ brains had sprouted plentiful new neurons and neural connections, did the lone rats start to produce brain cells. Social isolation had dramatically suppressed and slowed the process.

Why and how isolation affects exercise and neurogenesis remain somewhat mysterious, said Dr. Stranahan, now an assistant professor at Georgia Health Sciences University. But part of the cause almost certainly involves an excess of tension. “Exercise is a form of stress,” she pointed out. So is social isolation. Each, independently, induces the release of stress hormones (primarily corticosterone in rodents and cortisol in people). These hormones have been found, in multiple studies, to reduce neurogenesis. Except after exercise; then, despite increased levels of the hormones, neurogenesis booms. It’s possible, Dr. Stranahan said, that social connections provide a physiological buffer, a calming, that helps neurogenesis to proceed despite the stressful nature of exercise. Social isolation removes that protection and simultaneously pumps more stress hormones into the system, blunting exercise’s positive effects on brainpower.A recent follow-up experiment by scientists at the University of Houston produced similar results in female rats, which are even more sociable than males. Housed alone, the distaff rats experienced significantly less neurogenesis than female rodents with roommates, even though both groups ran similar distances on their wheels.

Does this happen in lonely human exercisers? No one knows, Dr. Stranahan said, since comparable experiments on people are impossible. (The animals were sacrificed.) But she added, “There is abundant epidemiological literature in people that loneliness has cognitive consequences, contributing to depression, strokes, Alzheimer’s and so on.”

On the other hand, new science suggests that at least in people, close relationships may reduce how fit someone is. For a study published online in December, researchers cross-correlated data about the cardiovascular fitness and relationship status of 8,871 adults who had been tested several times over the years at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas. They found that single women who remained single also retained most of their fitness, while those who married tended to become less fit. Meanwhile, men who divorced became fitter; men who remarried often let themselves go. The authors speculated that divergent worries about appearance and desirability could have been motivating single people to work out and married couples to slack off. (No data was included about those insidious destroyers of workouts, children.)

Taken together, these otherwise varying studies of rodents and humans suggest that while exercise may seem a simple physical activity engaged in by individuals, it is not. It is in fact a behavior plaited with social and emotional concerns that can influence how often you work out and with what physiological consequences. It may take longer for lonely people to improve the state of their brains with exercise, Dr. Stranahan said, just as it may take a divorce to get some men in shape. But thankfully, there are some aspects of exercise and interpersonal relationships that remain stubbornly unambiguous. In a 2010 study from the Neuroscience Institute at Princeton, male rats given access to “sexually receptive” females enthusiastically engaged in procreative activity, a moderate workout in its own right and, despite raising their stress hormones, vigorously pumped up the amount of neurogenesis in their brains. Sex improved their ability to think, obvious jokes notwithstanding.

Good Read on 5km Races

Heart of road racing found in smaller events

JOHN MARSDEN, GOING THE DISTANCE
When most people think of running races, we think of the big-city marathons, roads closed for hours, 20,000 people forming a human river through the city. The heart of road racing is to be found in the small local races, held on the back streets of every city and town in this country. This is the sport of running in its purest form.
We had one here in Guelph on a Sunday morning in the middle of January at a local high school. The organizers of the five-kilometre event were two of this city’s fastest runners, tending to their children while they set up the race.
Most of the 50 runners knew each other. At registration there were lots of handshakes, discussions about training and race plans for the spring. At the start, the runners eyed each other, picking out their opponents.
There were no rock bands along the route, no inflatable finish line structure. There was no line on the snow-covered road, the runners just lined up next to a telephone pole for the start. Two cones marked the finish line in the high school parking lot. Because these are runners’ races, the course is measured and the timing is accurate.
The lead runners were fast, as fast as you would find in a big race. They came across the finish line hard, looked at the clock, shook their heads and rested for a moment with their hands on their knees, before heading out in groups for a cool-down jog.
The last runners came across in 48 minutes. The youngest runner was seven years old, the oldest in his 60s; men and women, fast and slow. Everyone retreated to the cafeteria for apples and pizza and to check the results. Awards were small, pizza coupons from the ever-generous Gurinder Sami of our local Domino’s Pizza. Everyone was home by 11 in the morning, refreshed and inspired about the upcoming race season.
Running clinics look at the 5K as a beginner’s race. On the contrary, the 5K is one of the great distance races. To succeed, you need full distance training, as well as great finishing speed. Your 5K personal best is the standard by which distance runners are known.
Reid Coolsaet, when he was going for the Olympic qualifying time in the 5K, was running 160 kilometres a week in training. Coolsaet ran a 13:21, a series of 64-second laps, or two minutes 40 seconds per kilometre.
There is money to be made with the big-city marathons. When the big money goes home, the sport lives on in its purest expression in these small races, when runners gather to test their current fitness on the quiet streets.
The 5K is a great distance race. Let’s not lose it in the hyped-up world of race marketing. Find one near you. Check your local running store for the least flashy of the race brochures. Get out on Sunday morning and be part of the best of local athletics.